YoungUpstarts

JUNE 22, 2020

Good content offers the ability to generate leads, warm them, and transit them into the later stages of the sales journey. Start conversations with clients – In today’s online marketplace, brick and mortar conversations are few and far between. The goal of websites is to generate sales and grow their businesses.

Affiliate 230

Affiliate Startup Later Stage Search 230

The Equity Kicker

OCTOBER 14, 2014

He was on the money when he said that for early stage investments having a great team is most important but for later stage investments the market matters more. It’s fine to ask for a meeting, but be prepared to begin the relationship with an email conversation. Marc Andreessen wrote about this once. Venture Capital'

Early Stage 123

Early Stage Institutional Investors Venture Capital Startup 123

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 27, 2011

Usually we see 2-3x, but in later stage companies, this multiple can be even higher. Some sort of conversion does occur. In the case of an early-stage startup that hasn’t issued preferred stock yet, the debt converts into stock of the acquiring company (if it’s a stock deal) at a valuation subject to a cap.

Conversion 96

Conversion Sales Later Stage Preferred Stock 96

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2021

If you’re a later-stage fund that comes in when there’s less upside but a lower “loss ratio” you might have only 8–12 investments in a fund. Shots on Goal was originally published in Both Sides of the Table on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Bankruptcy 294

Bankruptcy Bridge Financing Portfolio Angel Investor 294

View from Seed

MARCH 8, 2016

They might believe that branding is a fluffy idea or a later-stage need, and right now, they need to move faster, launch, learn, grow, and survive. What’s important is that wherever possible, have those early conversations just to get started in thinking about your company’s brand. Is that the wrong mentality?

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Conversion Startup PR 120

View from Seed

MAY 18, 2016

At the seed stage, we typically have three-person boards with two founders and one VC — though as companies grow at later stages, five-person boards and ultimately six- or seven-person boards become more common. See #3 and #4 below for how to manage this.). Beware Board Observers.

Seed Stage 216

Seed Stage Cofounder Later Stage Government 216

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

I have conversations with entrepreneurs and other VCs on a daily basis about fund raising, the prices of deals, how much companies should raise, etc. The earlier you invest the higher the chances the company won’t work out and thus you pay a lower price than later-stage investors. So how exactly are prices determined?

Pre-Money Valuation 336

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Silicon Valley Stock 336

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 6, 2014

If you relay a story that during interviewing some of your colleagues found the candidate to be arrogant and you’re “wondering whether that was a problem when he worked with you” that exact conversation we be relayed to the candidate.

Technical Review 302

Technical Review Hiring Later Stage Employee 302

Austin Startup

JANUARY 3, 2019

They reached out to us but their investments are for a later stage than where Homads is at. The reason why they have such a great reputation is that even though we weren’t the right fit, they introduced us to investors that would be more likely to fit our stage.

Founder 48

Founder Angel Investor Technical Review Due Diligence 48

ConversionXL

AUGUST 2, 2016

When trying to boost conversions, whether it’s on a signup screen or a landing page, it’s a default for many optimizers to generate hypotheses based on best practices and what’s generally “known” to be a problem. I’ve recently successfully implemented this concept on a client’s website and conversions increased by 55%. Image Source.

Conversion 48

Conversion B2B Mobile Later Stage 48

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 5, 2014

We’re not mainly for B2B companies or later stage companies or anything like that. Here the rigor in qualifying the GLG Share members helps, because we want the conversation to be valuable on both sides. We have the ability to help excellent companies throughout their life cycles. David Teten: How do startups sign up?

New York 114

New York Technical Review Networking Advisory Board 114

Hunter Walker

JULY 11, 2022

Marketing manager tells startup that instead of discussing fulltime gig, she wants to pick a specific project she can work on for them over next few weeks and if it goes well, start the broader conversation about a job. Product manager knows founders of a later-stage startup pretty well.

Later Stage 83

Later Stage Marketing Early Stage Hiring 83

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 15, 2016

How much your company should burn should also have a direct correlation with whom your existing investors are and I strongly advise that you have open conversations with them about their comfort levels and also the level of support you are likely to receive going forward. In fact, most entrepreneurs I know don’t ask – why is that?

Burn Rate 150

Burn Rate Cap Table Valuation Software Review 150

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 28, 2019

Long-tail keywords are just such a group, and they’re particularly useful because they offer more targeted opportunities for leads and conversions. His passion is helping leading brands use data to make more effective decisions in order to drive new traffic and conversions.

Audience 164

Audience Algorithm eCommerce Cofounder 164

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 30, 2018

Many VCs will have a distribution curve where they’ll do a small number of early-stage deals (say $1.5–3 3 million invested at a $6–10m pre-money), a larger number of “down the fairway” deals ($4–5 million at a $15–25 million pre) and a few later-stage deals (say $8–10 million at a $30–40 million pre).Of

Valuation 324

Valuation Post-Money Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Cofounder 324

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 13, 2018

And PLEASE remember this critical advice for your meeting deck … The goal if a meeting deck is to aid your conversation not to show how great you are at making slides. The goal of a fund-raising meeting is to build rapport and you can only do this looking in somebody else eyeballs and having a two-way conversation. Don’t send these?—?go

Portfolio 261

Portfolio IP Later Stage Email 261

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 3, 2021

Conversely, investing too heavily in the long term will make it harder to generate initial momentum. An effective early-stage growth strategy would be: Inexpensive, capable of being executed on even a limited budget with a limited team. Balancing short-term and long-term growth. You need to find a balance. Email Marketing.

Early Stage 125

Early Stage PPC Retention Churn Rate 125

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 2, 2010

If they’re likely to raise a new fund then you might be OK but at least have the conversation with them. In an early stage deal that fund might reserve 2x their initial investment or if it’s a larger round or later stage they might reserve 1x. And know that raising new VC funds right now is incredibly hard.

Venture Capital 269

Venture Capital Balance Sheet Early Stage Software Review 269

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 14, 2021

This post is inspired by some of the earliest conversations I have had with the team here at NextView and since the beginning of my VC journey. Early-stage valuations are up 70%, and late-stage valuations are up 103% (source Pitchbook ). Back in 2018, my colleague Rob wrote a blog post about how the VC asset class is doing.

Valuation 319

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Distribution Early Stage 319

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 4, 2016

note: to follow realtime conversations & engage with me on Facebook you can follow me here: https://www.facebook.com/msuster ]. My conversations with LPs tell me that 2016 is one of their business calendars in years and unless we see an unexpected, sudden downturn expect the market size in 2016 to remain at current levels or increase.

LP 150

LP Valuation Burn Rate Pre-Money Valuation 150

OnlyOnce

MARCH 14, 2011

Every conversation and decision we made came down to finding out what would make the service (more) saleable. We set some pretty tight deadlines on the later stages. • Customer involvement, early and often —The team involved customers in building our new product from the very beginning.

Software Review 67

Software Review Development Team Review Later Stage Technical Review 67

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2016

Early stage. I think I’m better at the product stage of a business and helping with strategy, marketing, pricing, feature sets and so forth than I am at evaluating later-stage businesses based on financial results and business metrics and priced accordingly. Read the responses to this story on Medium.

Early Stage 254

Early Stage Non-Compete LP Later Stage 254

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 14, 2021

This post is inspired by some of the earliest conversations I have had with the team here at NextView and since the beginning of my VC journey. Early-stage valuations are up 70%, and late-stage valuations are up 103% (source Pitchbook ). Back in 2018, my colleague Rob wrote a blog post about how the VC asset class is doing.

Valuation 295

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Distribution Early Stage 295

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 12, 2013

Greg was the first person to share with me the insights of mobile conversion and why with a simpler product selection and conversion funnel they would get higher conversion on mobile than on the web. On each subsequent meeting I’d learn a little bit more. And largely synergistic with what we do – which is awesome.

Partner 360

Partner Las Vegas Los Angeles San Francisco 360

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 21, 2018

He was in a later-stage financing round and was talking with many investors. I was recently with an entrepreneur and talking with him about his fund raising process. Some started asking him for very specific analyses to be completed on his data and wanted his company to crunch the numbers.

Term Sheet 217

Term Sheet Later Stage Demand Email 217

This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 15, 2020

Lots of the data is skewed toward later stage rounds and I’ve never ever seen stats on who is pitching. Most of the visible institutional investors have been remarkably absent from these conversations on Twitter, or simply offering the bare minimum. Because they’re afraid to lose their access.

Venture Capital 122

Venture Capital Institutional Investors Later Stage Limited Partner 122

Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 6, 2017

I don’t remember the exact conversation, but it went something like this: Me: I didn’t find three companies because my goal was to build a model that identifies more companies in a scalable way. At later stages, there’s more access to private data that they can benchmark against their own successful portfolio.

Seed Stage 127

Seed Stage Later Stage Algorithm API 127

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 21, 2010

You never got around to agreeing exact equity splits but you had many conversations about it. They’ll invite you out to events in which you’ll meet their other clients, you can get to know them socially and hopefully develop a real mentorship relationship where every conversation is not on the clock.

Southern California 318

Southern California Silicon Valley IP Stock Options 318

Austin Startup

JUNE 30, 2017

Here are some thoughts, based on conversations I’ve had with founders and my own observations in the market, about the evolution of accelerators and how entrepreneurs are likely to engage them going forward. Top accelerators have corrected an imbalance between the strength of founders’ networks and those of VCs.

Curation 48

Curation Startup Cofounder Equity 48

View from Seed

JUNE 5, 2018

The quest for building such hiring machine is universal across companies at various stages. Keeping that in mind, we designed the program in such way that later-stage portfolio companies such as Dia&Co and MealPal could gain insights alongside younger ones such as Voodoo Manufacturing , ExecThread , and Virgent Realty.

Hiring 120

Hiring Portfolio Metrics B2C 120

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 18, 2017

So it was a timely conversation at this year’s Upfront Summit because the week of the Summit, Sequoia had announced that it was transitioning leadership from Jim Goetz to Roelof Botha (and US operations to Alfred Lin). Lindel Eakman led the discussion with Fred and Andy.

Leadership 161

Leadership LP Venture Capital Silicon Valley 161

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2019

As you probably know, we’ve been investing against a consistent theme - Marc Andreesseen’s “software is eating the world” - and always at multiple stages of a company’s growth - from seed to later-stage venture.

Lean 108

Lean Venture Capital Conversion IPO 108

Austin Startup

JULY 29, 2018

It doesn’t make any sense to pitch a later stage, “growth” investor with your seed stage idea just like it doesn’t make much sense to pitch a new tech startup to an investor who only does oil & gas. Some like to be the first investor to commit and others prefer to be the last.

Angel Investor 59

Angel Investor Technical Review Los Angeles Seed Stage 59

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 14, 2017

Are you going to only invest from the fund, or are you going to create SPVs on deals in later stages? If I give you $1, are you going to invest $0.85, $1 (meaning you recycle), or $1.10 (meaning you recycle 110%)? I paused to eat another piece of sushi.

Differentiation 147

Differentiation Later Stage Equity Founder 147

Up and Running

AUGUST 17, 2015

The fundraising process may start with friends and family, but may quickly shift to a bank loan, individual angel investors, or at a later stage, venture capital or private equity. During our fundraising conversations, I’ve been constantly amazed by the percent of people I’ve spoken to in the venture capital community that have MBAs.

Entrepreneur 60

Entrepreneur Cofounder Angel Investor eCommerce 60

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 21, 2021

What all the media and conversational focus seems to be on is the middle part—the implicit or explicit bias you encounter in the process itself. We’ve seen studies on how men and women get asked different questions, but I also think it’s incumbent upon all founders to control the conversation. First is network bias.

Venture Capital 162

Venture Capital Cofounder Deal Flow Later Stage 162

This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 30, 2010

Let me be clear about this: Never pass up an opportunity to have a “way too early” conversation with an investor. We have a good sense of what later stage VCs are going to look for and can help think about how much you need to raise to get additional interest down the line.

Technical Review 106

Technical Review Due Diligence Venture Capital Later Stage 106